A. J. Philip
visits the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and finds no signs of firepower that spurs the so-called keepers of the flock

NAGPUR
is a city of paradoxes. What strikes you most when you come out of the
airport is a huge arch across the road proclaiming "Welcome to
the City of Oranges". However hard you try in the sweltering
heat, orange is one thing you will not find even in the big fruit
market near the railway station.

Ask for oranges in any
shop, you will get various explanations why it has disappeared from
the city, through which 5 lakh tonnes of the fruit passes every year.
"Nagpur is no longer the orange capital of the country. The
citrus fruit is exported and not consumed here. This year the
production was pretty low"… thus went the explanations.

Once in Bhusawal, also
in Maharashtra, I could not find banana anywhere at the railway
station, though the town is famous as the banana capital of the
country. It was more out of curiosity than necessity that I searched
for oranges in Nagpur.

It is a city I have
passed through countless times but never had an opportunity to visit.
It may be a mere coincidence that when I reached the house where I was
to stay, NDTV was repeating, as is its wont, a lead item in its news
bulletin.

It
was a portion of a speech Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief K.S.
Sudarshan had delivered the previous day. He compared politicians to a
prostitute who changed her clothes and make-up to suit the tastes of
her clients. "What a shameless comparison! Could he not find a
better idiom?", my wife asked in righteous indignation.

But it roused hopes in
me of an interview with the sarsangchalak (the supreme leader). A few
telephone calls later, I had to give up hope as Mr Sudarshan was not
in town. My host was more than glad to take me to the RSS headquarters
in the old city area. On the way, I realised he was more interested in
offering me a glass of lassi from a shop famous for the
concoction.

The shop, situated close
to an old mosque, specialised in the drink. It attracted
"lassi" lovers from all over the city. They came in cars,
parked their vehicles in front of the shop, downed the window panes
and ordered lassi which was served in the vehicle. But we
decided to go inside the shop to savour the delicacy. "The secret
of the popularity of this shop is the ingredients put in the lassi ,
my host explained.

The thick drink was
supremely delicious. There were many floating items in the drink and I
could identify some of them as cashewnuts, badam, pumpkin seeds and
cream. "What is it that gives it the special touch? For a reply,
I got a smile from the shopkeeper. The walls in the shop were adorned
with photographs of politicians and film stars enjoying his lassi .

Deekshabhoomi, where Dr B. R. Ambedkar became a Buddhist. — Photo by the writer

With temperature
hovering around 48 degree C, there were fewer private vehicles on the
road. We spent more time drinking water than exchanging notes.
"Can I first take you to Deekshabhoomi?" asked the driver
and we readily agreed to it.

Soon we were in the
sprawling Deekshabhoomi, near Ramdaspeth, in the western part of the
city, where the architect of the Indian Constitution embraced Buddhism
along with lakhs of his followers on October 14, 1956. It was the
first time in history that so many people converted at one place in
one go. Why did he choose Nagpur, instead of Bombay? The availability
of four acres of prime land in the city and the persuasiveness of the
militant organiser of the Samta Sainik Dal, Waman Godbole, changed his
mind.

A large two-storied
domed structure consisting of the replicas of the gate of Sanchi stupa
commemorates Dr B.R. Ambedkar receiving "diksha" from the
oldest Buddhist monk in India at the time, a Burmese living at
Kusinagara.

Barricades are erected
to control visitors to the monument.

But at the time of our
visit, there was nobody to join us. The lady manning the gate was
enjoying an afternoon siesta when we woke her up from her slumber.
However, she seemed to be pleased to see us. Not only did she guide us
to the monument, she even volunteered to keep our belongings.

Inside the 4,000-sq ft
circular hall, we felt a great sense of relief from the oppressive
heat outside. A couple of Telugu-speaking Dalits were admiring the
architectural beauty of the monument. "There is no
air-conditioner. But don’t you feel that you are in an
air-conditioned room?" one of them asked with a lot of pride. I
nodded in agreement. It was not their first visit. They plan to come
next year to take part in the massive golden jubilee celebration of
diksha when a larger number of people would take "refuge" in
the Buddha, the dhamma and the sangha.

We did not feel like
leaving the place for fear of the heat wave but did not have much time
to spare, either. The lady at the gate wanted us to visit again when
there were more people.

From there we went
straight to Reshimbag where the driver thought the RSS headquarters
was located. On the way, we stopped to have Nagpuri buttermilk. When
we reached the "headquarters", the dark green-uniformed
gateman sprang up to open the gate to let us in.

"You are mistaken.
This is not the Sangh office, which is a kilometre away from
here", he said. Standing there, I remembered the controversial
"Walk the Talk" programme telecast a fortnight earlier. It
was the same spot from where K.S Sudarshan began his walk.

When we expressed our
desire to visit the campus there, the gateman would not let us in
without the express permission of his bosses. He took us inside the
building and introduced me to a dhoti-clad official, who was in charge
of reception. There was an expression of disbelief on his face when I
told him that we wanted to visit the place. To remove his confusion, I
gave him my visiting card.

He took quite some time
to study the details on the card before giving me a smile. He called a
young boy and asked him to accompany us to the Smriti Mandir, the
Samadhi of the RSS founder, Dr Keshava Baliram Hedgewar. The boy, a
tribal from Maharashtra, has been an inmate there for as long as he
could remember.

As we walked down to the
"Mandir", I noticed what I thought was a hideous exhibit.
But when I moved a little away from it and looked again, I realised it
was the statue of Lord Ganesha, the most playful of Hindu gods.

No, the confusion was
not the result of any optical illusion. The idol was made of motor car
parts, perhaps to symbolise the RSS’ desire to make Hinduism
muscular. The boy led us to the Smriti Mandir. The gatekeeper, a
retired government employee, who joined the RSS when he was young boy,
was expectedly taking a nap when we disturbed him.

He immediately warmed up
to us. But the moment I took out the camera, his warmth disappeared.
"Photography is a strict non-no". All my pleadings fell on
deaf ears. "If you insist, I will have to seek permission".
Saying this, he asked the boy to go and check with the higher
authorities. The moment he was gone, he allowed me to take photos, of
course, "secretly and quietly".

In the basement of the
Smriti Mandir, or the sanctum sanctorum, is the symbol "Om"
inscribed on lotus. The monument has a bronze statue of Dr Hedgewar in
a sitting posture overlooking the huge building complex that has three
bhavans – Pandurang Bhavan, Yadava Bhavan and Madhava Bhavan, named
after three of his colleagues. The conclave also houses a small
memorial — the sculpture of flame — to Guruji Madhav Sadashiv
Golwalkar, who succeeded Hedgewar.

By the time I took
photographs, the boy returned to tell the gatekeeper that photography
was not allowed. "Did I not tell you that photography is not
allowed?" He satisfied his guilty conscience.

The gatekeeper gave us a
detailed description of the route we should take to reach the Sangh
office. Yet, we had to stop a couple of times on the way to ask for
direction. The road was narrow and full of vehicles of all sorts. We
moved at snail’s pace and reached a dead-end. Yes, we were at the
RSS headquarters. As I had seen pictures of the building, I could
easily recognise it.

What struck me most was
the large presence of policemen there. They were everywhere, in the
parking area, at the gate, on the lawns and inside the building.
"Whom do you want to meet?" asked a burly police officer.
"Do you know that we do not allow photography?" he asked me
without waiting for my answer to his first query. Obviously, he had
noticed my camera.

"We wanted to meet
the sarsanghchalak. Since he is not in town, we would like to visit
the RSS museum", I answered. He deputed a moustachioed policeman
to accompany us to the reception. It was paradoxical that a voluntary
organisation needed policemen not only for security but even for
chores like conducting a visitor.

All offices in the RSS
headquarters have Sanskrit names. The tiny reception was swarming with
retired swayamsevaks. Every one had a piece of newspaper to read. It
seemed newspapers were split and read there! The person handling the
desk was well past his prime. Another was trying in vain to make a
long-distance phone call.

Surrounded by so many
old people, I suddenly remembered V.D. Savarkar’s pithy comment,
"The epitaph for the RSS volunteer will be that he was born, he
joined the RSS and he died without accomplishing anything".

The
"receptionist" was happy to find that I was a journalist. He
called a senior functionary to guide me to the museum on the second
floor. My arthritic guide found climbing the stairs difficult. He told
me about his visits to Chandigarh.

He opened the museum for
us. Almost in the centre of the hall was a cushioned cane chair.
"It was sitting on this chair that Guruji Golwalkar did most of
his writing. He also breathed his last while seated on this
chair". Despite all my entreaties, he did not allow me to take a
photograph of the chair or the exhibits.

The museum contains the
memorabilia associated with the sarsanghchalaks from Dr Hedgewar to
Sudarshan. My guide was too tired to take us around. He sat on a chair
and asked us to take the round ourselves. Just then, power disappeared
and there was total darkness in the room. "Should I open the
windows?" he inquired.

It would have been cruel
to ask him to do so. We waited for a minutes but power did not return.
"The power situation here is very bad", he said as he
somehow locked the room and haltingly led us down.

From the main building,
he took us to an annexe which houses a bookshop. It was pitch dark
inside and there was nobody to show us any books, let alone talk to
us. "Would you like to wait for electricity to return" the
guide asked me. It would have only strained him. We decided to leave
the dark, lonely place where everything was there except life. It was
difficult to believe that it was the headquarters of the
self-proclaimed warriors of the faith.